The Boston Firefighters Union has applied for a permit to picket Mayor Thomas M. Menino's state of the city address on Tuesday.
Union officials said last night they had not decided whether to stage a picket but were "looking very closely" at the idea.
"There's a strong probability that there will be a firefighter presence at the State of the City," said Edward Kelly, president of Local 718, who declined to talk about the contract dispute believed to be spurring the picket.
Local 718 has been working without a contract since July 2006. Negotiations broke down last year. City officials refused to give firefighters a 21 percent raise over four years in exchange for allowing random drug and alcohol testing and other concessions.
Boston police officers, who agreed to a 14 percent raise over four years, are randomly tested for drugs and alcohol.
The firefighters union has been under intense scrutiny since two firefighters died in a West Roxbury restaurant fire last August. Autopsy reports indicated one had a blood alcohol content of .27, and the other had traces of cocaine in his system.
If the firefighters follow through with picketing the mayor's speech, it would be the first time in years that Menino has had a public face-off with the union. In 2001, firefighters picketing his state of the city address yelled threateningly at the mayor's wife. Menino later met union demands.
Yesterday, city officials confirmed that the union had applied for a permit for an "informational picket" of this year's speech, scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Strand Theater in Dorchester.
City officials would not say whether they planned to issue the permit, and it was unclear how long the application process would take.
"We'll treat their application like any other application," said Dorothy Joyce, spokeswoman for Menino.
Concessions under negotiation include modifying contract language allowing firefighters to act out of pay grade, or fill in for supervisors, and allowing transfer decisions to be made not solely on the basis of seniority.
Proposed changes would also tighten injured and sick leave policies and ask firefighters to pay more toward their health insurance.
The union and the mayor have been at odds over a policy that allows firefighters to file for retirements at higher pay grades when filling in for a supervisor, an agreement reached by the city and the union in 2000.
Designed to streamline assignments, the contract agreement stipulated that when a superior officer was out ill or on vacation, the most senior person in years of service would fill in at the higher pay grade.
Before that, the contract required that the person next in line for promotion would fill in.
The relationship between Menino and the firefighters has been rocky, but government watchdogs say Menino has given in to them repeatedly, sometimes to the detriment of taxpayers.
Menino promised during his first campaign for mayor in 1993 that he would overhaul the Boston Fire Department, but three outside reviews of the department since then have issued 82 recommendations for improvement; the city has not followed through on 50 of them.
